For many years, residential exterior doors have been fabricated from wood with attendant disadvantages from the standpoint of insulating characteristics and tendencies to warp or delaminated More recently, insulated metal faced doors have experienced increasing usage for residential applications since such doors may include insulating cores limiting heat loss and since they also provide greater security and resistance to surface damage. Moreover, magnetic weather stripping can be combined with such metal faced doors so as to further improve the insulating characteristics within the door opening.
Generally, however, such metal faced doors have not been able to make any significant penetration into the market for replacement doors in existing door frame installations. In mounting replacement doors, it is just generally necessary to custom fit the door to the frame since the hinges and latch must be matched and since the frame may be skewed. Thus, trimming has been an essential aspect of fitting replacement doors and such trimming has not been feasible with conventional metal faced doors.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a novel method for making and installing an insulated metal faced entry door which will permit facile trimming to fit existing door frame installations.
It is also an object to provide such a method wherein the metal panels of the door are securely bonded to a peripheral wooden frame and cooperate therewith to provide a flush appearance for both faces of the door.
Another object is to provide such a method wherein the metal faces of the door are totally insulated from each other by a synthetic resin foam core, and the frame includes a reinforcement portion for firmly seating the knob and latch set.
Still another object is to provide a simple, effective and rapid method for mounting metal faced doors in existing door frame installations.